A spring challenge

This deep into 2010 your New Year's resolutions have either withered into ten more pounds around your mid-section or posterior (depending upon your predispostion) or you've developed the new habit that you'd hoped to develop in the final days of 2009.  Since we're at a time of year when many already have their noses to the grindstone as they focus upon spring cleaning or getting ready for finals, here's another challenge, an easy challenge in terms of initial investment but a most significant challenge in terms of final results.

Consider Jesus.

That's it.  Consider Jesus.  Consider his claims.  Consider what he said.  Consider what he did.

Not Dan Brown.  Not Rudolf Bultmann.  Not Richard Dawkins.  Just Jesus.

It is the Easter season, after all.

Why do I offer this challenge?  From the time of the 1800's, modern scholarship has done everything in its power to deconstruct Jesus Christ.  This eruption grew from the likes of Astruc, Semler, and Eichorn, European theologians, who believed that the Jesus of the Bible could not possibly be the same fellow that actually walked the earth.  What evidence did they have?  None.  No objective evidence on which to anchor this notion.  Just a gut feel.

The movement blew into a wildfire in Europe and spread across the Atlantic to set the American religious scene ablaze.  It has gutted what many believe to be Christianity with the same intensity as a housefire, but a  housefire cannot destroy the building's foundation.  The foundation of Christianity is Jesus Christ, the Jesus Christ of the Bible.

So is he substantial or is he a phantom?  Ah, there's the rub.  The New Testament Gospels, the biographies of Jesus written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, intend to provide its readers with historical evidence about the historical Jesus so that those who were not there when he walked the earth would have evidence by which to determine for themselves what they would do with this Galilean.

Consider how Luke opens up his narrative of Jesus.

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

It would sure seem that his intention is to provide evidence. While Luke starts his narrative in that manner, John reveals his intention toward the end of his bio of Jesus.

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John raises an interesting point.  He links belief to evidence.  Signs.  Many see faith in Jesus Christ as completely unsubstantial and without foundation.  On the contrary.  Belief in Jesus Christ must be substantial and upon a sure foundation or it is nothing. 

In the verses before John's declaration, Jesus confronts the doubter, Thomas.  Thomas had heard about Jesus' resurrection from the other disciples who had seen him.  Consider that eyewitness testimony.  He had no reason to doubt the testimony of his friends, but skeptic that he was, he wanted further evidence (a sincere skeptic and not a cynical skeptic).  So Christ appears to him eight days later and says, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe."  In other words, "Here's a bit more evidence for you.  Touch me."

Now, catch Jesus' response to Thomas after he declared him to be Lord and God.

Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

For those who have not seen Jesus, in what have they believed? Was it mystical, fantastical stories? Or was it coherent, substantive historical narrative?  Was it the signs they had seen during his life coupled with the testimony of these convinced fisherman.  Consider, too, that the Christian movement did not spring up in the Balkans or in Central America.  It grew up in the very town that executed him for being a threat to the religious and political order.  If the claims of Jesus' followers were false, wouldn't those hostile to him have squelched the movement before it began?

God never intended folks to tie themselves to a vapor.  He is willing for people to prove him.  He declared to his creation, "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!"

It is the Easter season after all.  Take a couple minutes each day and read through one of the Gospels (or all of them) and consider Jesus.
----------------------------
UPDATE:  The God who calls his creation to consider him is not an after-the-fact God.  Through the Bible, God says something and then God does something.  It's not as though he points back to something that happened and says, "I did that," and we're left to think, "Yeah, sure."  The plagues upon Egypt were Pharaoh's first hand look upon the God who is there.

Many believe that the plagues were just natural events that befell the nation (must have been a bad year) and only later did folks attribute it to the "hand of God."  That might be the case if the Bible were not full to the brim of instances of God saying and then doing. The most stunning aspect of this is prophecy, events that God says will occur in one place and it is fulfilled in vivid detail in another place.  A most striking example would be the execution of Jesus Christ and why it came about.  It's played out in the Gospels but its foretold hundreds of years before in excruciating detail in Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22.

Is it any wonder that in the first thirty-nine chapters of Ezekiel God challenges Israel with "then you will know that I am the LORD."